Thursday, February 27, 2014

Tensions rise over Crimean peninsula

All of Ukraine
shares a history with Russia. And the entire country is home to millions of
Russian-speaking citizens. But in the Crimean region many of Ukraine's internal
conflicts -- particularly its divisions regarding Russia -- are magnified.

The
majority of residents are ethnic Russians. The rest are ethnic Ukrainians
and Tatars. Many of the ethnic Russians feel a strong allegiance to Moscow.
Some would like the region to break away and become independent of both Kiev
and Moscow. Others would like it to become a part of Russia.

In a region where
national borders have shifted with political and military convulsions for
centuries, Crimea has changed rulers many times. During much of the Soviet
period it was part of the Russian republic. Then in 1954, in a surprising and
not wholly understood move, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea to
Ukraine. At the time, the redrawing of borders was not as meaningful as it is
now. The Crimea was still inside the USSR, still ruled from Moscow.

Crimea was the stage
for major historical events. In 1945, one of the most important of all Allied
meetings was held there, when Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill
joined Joseph Stalin at a Black Sea resort for the Yalta Conference, where they
planned the last phases of the war and started drawing the map of post-war
Europe.

The peninsula was
also the setting for the Crimean War in the 19th century, as the Great Powers
fought each other for control of the Old World and of the pivotal Black Sea.

Crimea has strong
historic, political, cultural and geographic links to Russia. But perhaps most
important, it has paramount strategic value.

Take a look at a map
to see it more clearly.

Look at the city of
Sevastopol near the southern tip of the Crimean Peninsula. Sevastopol has long
been a major naval port for Russia. Today it is the headquarters for Russia's
Black Sea fleet.

Imagine you have
Russian cargo -- say, weapons you want to send to your ally in Syria. The best
route is through the Crimea, sailing toward Istanbul, then across the
Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. In fact, the Russian navy needs Sevastopol
in order to have access to the Mediterranean and to the Indian Ocean during the
winter months. It has a smaller civilian port at Novorossiysk, a much inferior
option.

Sevastopol became
the subject of heated negotiations when the Soviet Union was collapsing. In
1990, Ukraine and Russia agreed to grant special status to the area, with a
long-term lease for the naval facility running until 2047. The arrangement is
vaguely reminiscent of the U.S. lease at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

With the collapse of
the pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine last week, Russia sees a threat to its larger
goal of maintaining a sphere of influence over its "near abroad,"
what used to be the Soviet Union. It wants to protect its natural gas pipelines
across Ukraine. And it has a specific concern with preserving its facilities in
Sevastopol. It also wants to protect Ukraine's ethnic Russians from
discrimination.

The danger is that
Russia will use the situation of Ukraine's Russian speakers as a pretext to
achieve its other goals. It did that in 2008 when it invaded the Republic of
Georgia and gave official recognition to breakaway regions as independent
states.

Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would defend Ukraine's Russians
"uncompromisingly." At the same time, President Vladimir Putin
ordered military exercises on Ukraine's border and put 150,000 troops on alert.
Russia's Interfax news agency said the Defense Ministry reported that
"constant air patrols are being carried out by fighter jets in the border
regions."

Some
26,000 Russian troops are believed to be stationed in Sevastopol. Ukraine's
new President warned Moscow that if Russian troops leave their bases "it
will be considered military aggression."

The unfolding drama
-- seized government buildings, military forces on alert, uncompromising
language -- gave cause for alarm to the countries' neighbors. Poland's Foreign
Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called it "a very dangerous game,"
warning, "this is how regional conflicts begin."

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine – Dozens of armed men in military uniforms seized an airport in the capital of Ukraine's strategic Crimea region early Friday, a report said.

Witnesses told the Interfax news agency that the 50 or so men were wearing the same gear as the ones who seized government buildings in the city, Simferopol, on Thursday and raised the Russian flag.

The report said the men with "Russian Navy ensigns" first surrounded the Simferopol Airport's domestic flights terminal.

The report could not be immediately confirmed.

The events in the Crimea region have heightened tensions with neighboring Russia, which scrambled fighter jets to patrol borders in the first stirrings of a potentially dangerous confrontation reminiscent of Cold War brinksmanship.

Russia also has granted shelter to Ukraine's fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, after recent deadly protests in Kiev swept in a new government.

While the government in Kiev, led by a pro-Western technocrat, pledged to prevent any national breakup, there were mixed signals in Moscow. Russia pledged to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Yanukovych was said to be holed up in a luxury government retreat, with a news conference scheduled Friday near the Ukrainian border. He has not been seen publicly since Saturday.

On Thursday, as masked gunmen wearing unmarked camouflage uniforms erected a sign reading "Crimea is Russia" in Simferopol, Ukraine's interim prime minister declared the Black Sea territory "has been and will be a part of Ukraine."

Yanukovych, whose abandonment of closer ties to Europe in favor of a bailout loan from Russia set off three months of protests, finally fled by helicopter last week as his allies deserted him. The humiliating exit was a severe blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been celebrating his signature Olympics even as Ukraine's drama came to a crisis. The Russian leader has long dreamed of pulling Ukraine -- a country of 46 million people considered the cradle of Russian civilization -- closer into Moscow's orbit.

For Ukraine's neighbors, the specter of Ukraine breaking up evoked memories of centuries of bloody conflict.

Russia's dispatch of fighter jets Thursday to patrol borders and drills by some 150,000 Russian troops -- almost the entirety of its force in the western part of the country -- signaled strong determination not to lose Ukraine to the West.

Barricades have become a common sight during the recent wave of anti-government protests in Venezuela. BBC Mundo's Vladimir Hernandez in Caracas takes a closer look at who is erecting them and why their use is controversial.

Stupider With MonogamyFEB. 27, 2014Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyCarl ZimmerCarl ZimmerMATTERContinue reading the main storyShare This PageForcing male flies into monogamy has a startling effect: After a few dozen generations, the flies become worse at learning.

This discovery, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, isn’t a biological excuse for men who have strayed from their significant other. Instead, it’s a tantalizing clue about why intelligence evolved.

The new study was carried out by Brian Hollis and Tadeusz J. Kawecki, biologists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. They investigated a fly species called Drosophila melanogaster that normally has a very un-monogamous way of life.

To find a mate, the male flies seek out females on rotting pieces of fruit. They often engage in battles to chase their rivals away, and then pick a female to court.

“The males will do this wing song, where they use one wing or the other to generate a song,” said Dr. Hollis. This wing song may last from 10 minutes to an hour.

Continue reading the main storyDrosophila Courtship Song - Genetics - University of Leicester Video by UniversityLeicesterContinue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGE

More Matter ColumnsVirgin females usually accept the overtures. But if a female has just mated, she will reject a new male’s advances. “If a male comes at her from behind and she’s not interested, she’ll kick at him with her rear legs,” said Dr. Hollis. If a couple of days have passed since her last mating, however, the female may choose to mate again.

Seven years ago, while he was a graduate student at Florida State University, Dr. Hollis set out to study how the competition among males shapes their evolution. He began breeding two groups of flies — one polygamous, the other monogamous.

In 2011, he took his flies to the University of Lausanne, where he met Dr. Kawecki, an expert on learning. The two scientists wondered if the different mating habits of Dr. Hollis’s flies had altered their brains.

To find out, the researchers gave the flies a learning test. They began by teaching the flies to be scared of a particular smell. They would put a smelly piece of paraffin into the tubes where the flies lived, and after 30 seconds, the scientists gave the tubes a violent shake. After many such experiences, the flies learned to associate the smell with the shaking.

An hour later, the scientists tested how well they had learned. The flies were put in a tunnel that ended with a T intersection. From one side they smelled the dangerous odor, and from the other they smelled a harmless one. Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki then observed which way the flies walked.

The results were stark. The monogamous flies were much more likely to wander toward the dangerous smell than the polygamous ones. In other words, they had done a much worse job of learning.

“I think this is a compelling and interesting study,” said Emilie Snell-Rood of the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the research. The experiment, she said, suggests that the struggle to find a mate favors the evolution of better learning.

The evolution of learning remains a puzzle for scientists. A smart animal can learn how to find more food or how to avoid predators. But if learning were such an unalloyed good, then one might expect all animals to be as smart as we are.

They are not because there is a cost to learning. Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues have found that flies that have been bred to be good learners are more likely to die when competing for scarce food with regular flies. Even when they’re not threatened with starvation, their life span is 15 percent shorter than average.

ScienceTake: Fight Club for Flies Why are males aggressive? Researchers have found clues in the brains of fruit flies.It’s still not clear why that is so. Changes to the nervous system that come with learning may cause long-term damage of some sort, or learning may simply use up energy that could be directed to other uses.

Continue reading the main storyBecause of the cost, evolution may increase learning only when its benefits outweigh its drawbacks — such as when it affects mating. Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki suspect that fast-learning males may be able to swiftly recognize receptive females, and thus mate with more of them before they die. Forcing the flies into monogamy, on the other hand, gets rid of learning’s benefits, leaving only the cost behind.

To test this idea, Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki compared the mating prowess of the evolved flies. They put a group of male flies in a vial with one receptive female and five unreceptive ones and tallied how many mated in an hour. The scientists found that the polygamous males quickly zeroed in on the receptive female. The monogamous males, on the other hand, wasted time courting unreceptive females and being rejected.

“They’re just not figuring it out,” said Dr. Hollis.

While no one has yet carried out an experiment like this on other species, Dr. Hollis suspects that the relationship between sex and the evolution of learning might apply beyond flies — perhaps even to our own species.

“I think it really can inform us quite a lot about what’s going on in nature, and why we have the brains we have,” said Dr. Hollis.

I have long thought that Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee and the Palestine Legislative Council, is the most articulate spokesperson in the Israeli occupied territory for her cause. Her latest comment is a bleak assessment of the prospects for getting a real peace process going. She was responding to a statement by an Obama administration official that both Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be able to “express reservations about individual provisions” in the framework document Secretary of State John Kerry is preparing. Here’s what Ashrawi said:

A framework that allowed each side to voice reservations would be self-negating… Any document not based firmly on international law will become a box of chocolates. You can pick and choose what you want… Why have it? Is it just to maintain a semblance of progress? Is it meant to buy more time? Or is it not to admit we have failed?

If Napoleon hadn't screwed the pooch with his very ill planned and ill equiped invasion of Russia, and had done it right, and the grand armee had taken Moscow and been able to hold on, well, we'd have the Napoleonic Code in effect in Ukraine, would we not?, and all would be well.

Both the troubles in Ukraine and in Venezuela can be laid at the feet of stupid Napoleon and his damned code.

***Anderson, who signed a lease with an energy company and is now also getting royalty checks from oil production, said the money he's received has changed his outlook on work.

"Now I don't think about having to go back to work. This is my work. I maintain the property," he said of his 500-plus acres. "I watch after the timber and I feed the deer and the turkeys, and that's what I do for a living now."***

Maybe Ruf's attitude towards the evil oil companies will change when they find oil under place...........

Shale brings high hopes in Mississippi, LouisianaShale formation could finally prove lucrative for parts of Mississippi and LouisianaAssociated Press By Jeff Amy, Associated Press13 hours agoShale brings high hopes in Mississippi, Louisiana.View photoIn this Dec. 23, 2013 photograph, Amite County Supervisor Max Lawson describes the convoy of about 200 trucks carting in a drilling rig and other gear on what was pasture land at his Gillsburg, Miss., farm. After a little more than a two-year wait, Encana Corp., contractors were finally drilling. Oil companies plan a big increase in drilling activity in 2014 in southwest Mississippi. They're trying to extract oil from a formation called the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, which one study says could hold 7 billion barrels. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

GILLSBURG, Miss. (AP) -- Residents living above an oil-rich shale formation that stretches across southwest Mississippi and Louisiana have been waiting on a boom for years. A steady trickle of drilling is already boosting the rural region's economy, and spending by two oil companies could make 2014 the year that many other locals finally cash in on the oil far beneath their feet.

Already, Max Lawson has spent hours watching the round-the-clock work of shoving pipe into the ground in his back pasture. The process began two years ago when Encana Corp. built a big gravel pad, but didn't take off until late last year when a convoy of 200 trucks carted in a drilling rig and other equipment to bore into the earth looking for oil.

"They call it the Gillsburg Christmas tree," he said while standing near the brightly lit rig. "It looks like a little city over here at night."

Gillsburg and surrounding Amite County lie above a prime section of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, a geologic formation that stretches in boomerang shape across Louisiana's midsection and into southern Mississippi. Drillers have known about the formation north of the Gulf of Mexico for years, but affordable technology to remove the oil from the shale's tight pores was slow to develop.

Thanks partly to advances in hydraulic fracturing techniques, Encana Corp. and Goodrich Petroleum plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the area in 2014. So far, Goodrich and others have drilled more than 30 wells across the region, trying to find the right methods.

Goodrich Chief Operating Officer Robert Turnham said that number could double or triple in the area straddling the state line just this year if drillers continue to make progress.

"It's at a stage where you need more wells that have consistent results, that show the repeatable results there are in other plays," Turnham said.

Louisiana State University scientists estimate the formation holds 7 billion barrels of oil, though that total isn't proven yet. Most of it is a light, sweet crude that can be sold to refiners for more than $100 a barrel. By comparison, the federal government estimates that the U.S. has about 40 billion barrels of proved oil reserves.

There is a photo mentioned, in the post, why did you not start a new thread to display it?If you refuse to start a new thread, why did you not edit the paste to reflect that truth.

Why post items with out all the data?

You have the capability to do so.

Are you lacking in ability, or just lack the imagination? Are you lacking the mental capacity to utilize your capabilities?Or are the social responsibilities of providing quality information to the reader just to much for you to handle?

(Reuters) - Armed men took control of two airports in the Crimea region on Friday in what Ukraine's new leadership described as an invasion and occupation by Moscow's forces, and ousted President Viktor Yanukovich reappeared in Russia after a week on the run.

Yanukovich said he would continue the struggle for Ukraine's future as tension soared on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the only region with an ethnic Russian majority and last major bastion of resistance to the overthrow of the Moscow-backed leader.

More than 10 Russian military helicopters flew into Ukrainian airspace on Friday over Crimea, Kiev's border guard service said, accusing Russian servicemen of blockading one of its units in the port city of Sevastopol, where part of Moscow's Black Sea fleet is based.

The fleet denied its forces were involved in seizing one of the airports, Interfax news agency reported, while a supporter described the armed group at the other site merely as Crimean militiamen.

Moscow has promised to defend the interests of its citizens in Ukraine.

TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Iranian foreign minister in a Friday meeting with India’s vice president elaborated on the Islamic Republic’s general foreign policy stances, and mulled over the other issues of mutual interest.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, now in India for an official visit, held a meeting with the Indian vice president, Hamid Ansari, in capital New Delhi on Friday morning.

The Iranian top diplomat arrived in the populous Asian country earlier on Thursday on a two-day official visit.

During the get-together this morning, Zarif elaborated on the foreign policy pursued by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s administration, and discussed Tehran-New Delhi mutual cooperation, as well as regional and international developments with the Indian vice president.

Moreover, Zarif expressed the hope that Iran and India would forge stronger partnership in the political, economic and cultural arenas in light of their long-standing friendship.

Ansari, for his part, touched upon the historical ties between Iran and India, and emphasized the need for the enhancement of bilateral relations.

The Indian vice president also hailed Iran’s “strategic role” in providing security across the region.

If you object to the subject, ignore it, or answer it with facts, figures and the truth.Does Israel allow the IAEA into israel to inspect, either the civilian or military nuclear programs that the Israeli have ...

We all know the answer is NO! they do not.The Israeli are nuclear rogues, just like North Korea.

Morelia, Mexico, Feb 27 (EFE).- The militias that emerged a year ago in the western Mexican state of Michoacan to defend communities from a powerful drug cartel are expanding their presence on the Pacific coast, officials said.

Roughly 200 men armed with assault rifles gathered Wednesday on Caleta de Campos beach near the key port of Lazaro Cardenas, a source in the state government told Efe.

Clad in bulletproof vests and carrying walkie-talkies, the men urged area residents to join the struggle against the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel, which has used extortion and murder to extend its tentacles into legitimate business.

Some 60 other vigilantes took control of Opopeo, a town in the Purepecha Indian territory, the source said.

Militia members set up late Wednesday a checkpoint on a road running parallel to the Siglo XXI expressway that links Morelia, Michoacan's capital, with the state's Pacific coast.

Members and supporters of Michoacan's self-defense groups organized an event Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of their founding.

Backed by local business interests, the militias filled a vacuum created by the failure of state and municipal authorities to halt the depredations of the Templarios, who co-opted many of Michoacan's politicians.

Federal Police and army troops have been deployed in Michoacan for the past month as part of a bid by Mexico's government to crush the Templarios and bring the militias under the formal control of the military.

Many of the Michoacan vigilantes have signed up for an army-controlled Rural Defense Corps.

There's a term for that in Rupert Sheldrake, a type of his 'morphic resonance' I think.

Other scientists think they are just 'following the leader'.

The mystery remains.

My blessed aunt loved birds but hated starlings for some reason, I think because they were always making life difficult for her robins, blue birds, etc. Neither I, nor she, I am sure, have ever seen flocks in those large concentrations out this way.

The part of the past that you deem most relevant can be critical in determining your outlook for the future. And nowhere is that clearer than in the changing economic forecasts that come out of the Congressional Budget Office.

This year’s short-term and long-term economic forecasts are substantially worse than last year’s, even though the economy performed better than expected in 2013. What changed was that the C.B.O. economists essentially decided that they would no longer treat the recent years of poor economic performance as a sort of outlier. They have seen enough of a slow economy to begin to think that we should get used to sluggishness.

They think that Americans will earn less than they previously expected, that fewer of them will want jobs and that fewer will get them. They think companies will invest less and earn less. The economy, as measured by growth in real gross domestic product, will settle into a prolonged period in which it grows at an average rate of just 2.1 percent. From 2019 through 2024, job growth will average less than 70,000 a month...

The lack of up-to-date infrastructure has been the scourge of the Russian Navy since when Russia was an Empire. The weak overhaul base of Vladivostok and Port Arthur had largely exacerbated the plight of Russia’s 1st Pacific Squadron during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Similar overhaul problems plagued the Soviet Navy action in the Arctic Circle during the Second World War. Finally, the Soviet Navy, armed with nuclear missiles, failed to get an appropriate infrastructure during the Cold War years. The shortage of docks, properly-equipped quays, no power feeding for waterfront facilities etc. caused many ships to lie out, while using their own resource.

The first effort to improve base infrastructure on the Pacific was made at the Vilyuchinsk base, where the first Pacific submarine of the Project 955, Alexander Nevsky, is due to arrive later this year.

The Vladivostok naval base has also been brought up-to-date, with the quays almost fully rebuilt by the APEC summit, and other infrastructure elements, from warehouses to barracks, largely renovated. But the Vladivostokamphibious assault ship will be based a little farther, in Ulysses Bay.

They built a submarine and have an empty naval base, that the bulk of their Pacific presence.

The 45,000 ton Vikramaditya was originally a Russian Kiev class carrier that served in the Russian Navy from 1987 to 1995, but was then withdrawn from service because the navy could not afford to keep the carrier operational.

MOSCOW — Viktor F. Yanukovych, the ousted president of Ukraine, declared on Thursday that he remained the lawful president of the country and appealed to Russia to “secure my personal safety from the actions of extremists.” Russian news agencies reported that he had already arrived in Russia, but officials did not immediately confirm that.

Mr. Yanukovych’s remarks were his first since he appeared in a video on Saturday night after fleeing Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, for eastern Ukraine. His defiance of the country’s new interim leaders only deepened the political turmoil in the country and threatened to draw Russia more deeply into the conflict.

Mr. Yanukovych, in a letter published by news agencies here, went on to suggest that largely Russian regions of Ukraine – including the east and Crimea – did not accept “the anarchy and outright lawlessness” that had gripped the country and said that orders by the new authorities to use the armed forces to impose order were unlawful. He clearly meant the response to pro-Russia demonstrations in Crimea, which took an ugly turn on Thursday morning when armed gunmen seized control of the regional Parliament in Simferopol.

“I, as the actual president, have not allowed the armed forces of Ukraine to interfere in the ongoing internal political events,” he said, contradicting early reports that he had ordered the military to intervene in Kiev, only to have his order rebuffed. “I continue to order this. In the case that anyone begins to give a similar order to the armed forces and power structures, those orders will be unlawful and criminal.”

Ukraine's political split reflects a deeper cultural divide in the country. In the 2010 presidential election, the opposition won in all of Ukraine's western provinces, where most people speak Ukrainian rather than Russian and many call for deeper economic and political ties with Europe.

February 16, 2014: On February 7th an Indian pilot landed a MiG-29K on the new Indian aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya for the first time. A Russian pilot was in the back seat to advise but the landing went off with no problem. Indian carrier pilots had been practicing on Vikramaditya size land air strips. This was not the first time a MiG-29K landed on the Vikramaditya. That happened in July 2013 while the Vikramaditya was still in Russia undergoing sea trials. A Russian pilot handled those landings and takeoffs using the carriers "ski jump" flight deck. During the July operations the Russians also tested their Su-35 carrier fighter landing and taking off from the Vikramaditya.

The new Indian carriers is using the new STOBAR (short-takeoff-but-assisted recovery) system. STOBAR is simpler, and cheaper, to build and maintain than earlier catapult launch systems, which used a more robust assisted (with stronger arrestor wires) landing systems. The Vikramaditya will operate with 16 MiG-29K jets and twelve helicopters. India has used vertical takeoff (Harrier) combat aircraft on carriers since the 1980s. With the MiG-29 India returns to using regular fixed-wing aircraft on carriers. These aircraft can carry more weapons and fuel than vertical takeoff planes.

On November 30th, 2013, three months after Vikramaditya had finally completed its sea trials off the northern coast of Russia the carrier set off for India and arrived in early January. All this was good news, especially since the Vikramaditya saga had been one long string of disappointments for so long. India was supposed to take possession of the Vikramaditya by late 2012, but that was delayed until early 2013, and then delayed until late 2013. Some of the Indian crew have been working with the Vikramaditya for two years by then, learning about all the ship's systems.

For the trip home Vikramaditya was accompanied by an Indian frigate and a tanker carrying fuel for both ships. As they entered the Mediterranean they were met by two more Indian warships (a destroyer and a frigate) and all five ships proceeded, via the Suez Canal, to a naval base outside Karwar, a city halfway down the west coast of India. Vikramaditya is to be fully operational by July 2014.

In addition to being late, the ship was way over budget. There were also problems when it was finally completed in 2012, eight years after negotiations began. Finding and fixing problems seemed like an endless process. Even the first attempt at sea trials in 2012 found some problems with the engines (and several other items) which took over six months to get fixed. Getting the Vikramaditya to this point has been an epic saga to incompetence, bad communications, shoddy work, and inept shipyard management. Even by Russian standards the Vikramaditya project was a huge mess. In addition to being very late, the original cost has more than doubled.

Aside from the engine failure (a major flaw), the 2012 sea trials off the north coast (Barents Sea) of Russia did not reveal any other major problems. In all other respects the ship appeared to be in working order. The engine safety system, for example, detected the overheating and shut down the engines before any serious damage could be done. Other safety systems on the ship also worked well, and the Russians pointed out that there were problems with some Western equipment the Indians insisted on using. Most importantly, in 2012 the carrier experienced its first landing by a MiG-29. Any other equipment problems noted during the sea trials were fixed while the engine insulation system is rebuilt.

The 45,000 ton Vikramaditya was originally a Russian Kiev class carrier that served in the Russian Navy from 1987 to 1995, but was then withdrawn from service because the navy could not afford to keep the carrier operational. The ship was put up for sale in 1996 and in 2005. India agreed to buy it if a few changes could be made. India ended up paying over $2.3 billion to refurbish the Kiev class ship and turn it into the Vikramaditya.

If the locks on the Panama Canal were blown, would one ocean pour into the other?

April 8, 1988Dear Cecil:

Would one ocean pour into the other if the locks on the Panama Canal were blown? If not, let's say a mile-deep trench were dug from coast to coast. Would there be flooding then, huh?

— Eliot R., Los Angeles

Cecil replies:

No, you mollusk. They don't have locks on the Panama Canal because one ocean is higher than the other, they have them because the land is higher in the middle — 85 feet higher, to be exact. As I have explained in the past, the level of the sea is more or less uniform throughout the world, making the concept of "sea level" possible.

But that's not to say you wouldn't get any flow from one ocean to the other if somebody dug your "mile-deep trench" from coast to coast. Scientists studying the feasibility of a sea-level canal (not a mile deep, but deep enough) have found that the Pacific at Panama is about eight inches higher than the Atlantic on average due to currents and such. In addition, tidal variation on the Pacific side of Panama is much greater than on the Atlantic side — 20 feet vs. 1 foot.

That means the Pacific would flow into the Atlantic through the sea-level canal, producing currents that could reach nearly 6 MPH. While that wouldn't cause flooding, it would definitely complicate navigation.

But that's the least of the problems a sea-level canal would present. It would also allow Pacific and Atlantic marine species to mingle, with unpredictable but probably bad consequences for the environment. Worse, constructing it would require either (1) tens of billions of dollars or (2) nuclear explosives. So don't expect it any time soon.

Mao “was happiest and most satisfied with several young women simultaneously sharing his bed,” Li writes. “He encouraged his sexual partners to introduce him to others for shared orgies, allegedly in the interest of his longevity and strength.”Mao chose handsome young men as personal attendants, who among other duties were expected to massage his groin nightly to help him fall asleep. “For a while I took such behavior as evidence of a homosexual strain,” Li says, “but later I concluded that it was simply an insatiable appetite for any form of sex.”Mao was a carrier of a parasitic STD but refused treatment, spreading the disease among his partners. He further refused to bathe or clean his genitals, receiving only nightly rubdowns with hot towels. “I wash myself inside the bodies of my women,” he told Li. For what it’s worth, he apparently also never brushed his teeth. This may not sound like a kink to you, but you didn’t have to kiss him.

One member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is considering resigning in protest over recent defense cuts, says Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

The ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast on Thursday that the nation’s top military officers have privately expressed their discontent with the continuing budget uncertainty at the Defense Department.

Time magazine's Mark Thompson asked Inhofe, “How close do you think [the chiefs] are to saying, ‘Screw this, I'm out of here?’”

“I'm not going to tell you who they are, but there's one who's very close to doing just what you're suggesting,” responded Inhofe. His role on the Senate Armed Services Committee entails frequent meetings with top military commanders.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.